(written May 12, 2014)
I love animation.
I love traditional animation.
I love to draw.
Then why am I so exhausted only after a week?
Tag Archives: animation
Unity 3D – Textures Don’t Double in List
Just installed Unity3D Pro. Yes, I paid for it. Check out Studica if you’re a student, they make it a little more affordable to get the Pro commercial version of Unity. Grossly overpriced for what you get now-a-days compared to the free version, but what little you do get is valuable. Especially the “Profiler,” a great debugging tool that shows you what resources your game is using.
After a quick test, I think I found that an array of the same Material, no matter how big, will take roughly the same amount of RAM, CPU, GPU, etc. Sounds irrelevant, but it means I can probably redo my animation system, simply to list out animations in order, and if the animation happens to use the same frame in the cycle, I can list it twice without taking extra memory (if this is a huge error on the profiler’s part, feel free to say so below, but I’m just quoting what I saw myself testing it).
Also found out that to finish about 8% of animation for one character takes me roughly 12 hours. Dear God that’s a long time… but this also means I could theoretically finish animating a character in two weeks, if I really worked hard at it. Otherwise, at least a month. Better keep at it!
Animation Test – Drew – May 6, 2014
So, I’ve been testing a new workflow for animation.
Previously, I was only using Photoshop. Frankly, it’s terrible for hand-drawn animation. But I recently rediscovered Pencil, a free pencil-test program, and am trying a new workflow: rough animations in Pencil, put frames in Photoshop, trace over frames making sure they look good frame by frame, and export the final for use in Unity3D. It’s extra work, but I think it’ll lead to better animation, and may be quicker too when not second-guessing myself in Photoshop. We’ll see.
In the meantime, here’s some test animations made in Pencil so far. In my opinion, it’s a huge improvement over “James,” so I’m hopeful that I am getting better.
Drew – Idle, Running, Jumping Animations combined
Pencil2D – Pencil Test Animation Software
I love animation.
I love traditional animation.
But how would you make such animation on the computer? Programs like Blender3D offer 3D animation, Flash and similar programs offer modern 2D animation. But I want traditional, draw-every-frame-by-hand animation. I’ve been using Photoshop for a long time, which is slow and cumbersome. But what should you use?
Public Game Testing (Part 1)
I showed off my latest unannounced indie game, as well as a couple other projects, to help promote my University at a local mall. I like volunteering at events like these, but doing so over the next few months also gives me fantastic opportunity to ask general people what they think of my work.
Of course, being in the middle of a mall doesn’t guarantee many will stop to see you. The entire University probably had about a hundred people stop to see the exhibit, about a dozen of which stopped to see my work. And the results?
